CSIRO abandons research into GM peas

PM - Friday, 18 November , 2005 18:42:00

Reporter: Paula Kruger

MARK BANNERMAN: It is an issue that has caused fierce debate among scientists, farmers and consumers - whether or not genetically modified food is bad for your health.

Adding fresh fuel to that debate is news today that the CSIRO has had to abandon 10 years of research into genetically modified field peas because it made mice sick.

The CSIRO says the result shouldn't cause alarm, because it shows that there are adequate measures in place to weed out defective GM crops.

But opponents of the technology say not all producers of GM products maintain the same high standards and that the long-term effects are still unknown.

Paula Kruger reports.

PAULA KRUGER: The field pea may sound like a humble little plant, but it's actually an important rotation crop for Australian farmers worth up to $100 million a year.

And when the CSIRO took on the task of genetically modifying it, they wanted to make a plant that was resistant to pea weevils, a pest known to decimate 30 per cent of crop yields.

So they created a new field pea by adding a protein found in Kidney beans that causes the weevil to starve to death.

But when they added kidney bean DNA to encourage the field pea to create the protein itself, the humble sounding plant had its own ideas and made a different protein.

The result was a product resistant to insect attack, but when it was fed to mice in small quantities over a few weeks, it made them sick.

Deputy Chief of CSIRO Plant Industry Dr T J Higgins.

T J HIGGINS: The mice responded, not in a life-threatening way, these tests showed that there was inflammation of their lungs, which means that white blood cells go to that point of stress in the lung tissue.

KAREN KRUGER: So we can assume that it was something that affected the immune system?

T J HIGGINS: That's right. Absolutely.

PAULA KRUGER: Dr Higgins says he is very disappointed his team couldn't create a safe pest resistant field pea and says this rarely happens.

T J HIGGINS: There has been one other case that has occurred during the 10 or 15 years that genetic modification has been going on. That was a case where a gene was being transferred from Brazil nuts into soybeans to improve the protein quality of soybeans for feeding animals. Most proteins do not change when they're transferred.

PAULA KRUGER: The CSIRO has tried to spin a positive out of the failed project by saying it shows that measures designed to protect the public from unsafe GM products are effective.

But that is not the view of Dr Judy Carmen the Director of the Institute of Health and Environmental Research.

JUDY CARMEN: First of all, I think the people who did this study should be congratulated, because this is the kind of study that should be done on all GM foods.

And the study was done with the CSIRO, but it was particularly done at the John Curtin School of Medical Research and they have done a very good study here.

One of the problems with this study is that, as I said, it hasn't actually been done with other GM foods and needs to be done.

So while Dr T J Higgins is saying that this shows that the regulatory process is working, unfortunately it doesn't, because this pea has never made it to the regulatory process.

PAULA KRUGER: So you fear that there's probably other genetically modified products out there that, like this field pea, would fail the test if it went through animal testing?

JUDY CARMEN: Yes. There very well could be and I think that we do need to have very thorough safety testing done on animals.

PAULA KRUGER: The feeling among farmers is mixed. The Farmers Federation grains group in Victoria say they're disappointed the field pea project had to be scrapped but that it shouldn't diminish the public's confidence in GM technology.

But Julie Newman, a Western Australian farmer and spokeswoman for the Network of Concerned Farmers doesn't share their confidence and says some farmers are finding it hard to remain GM free.

JULIE NEWMAN: We haven't got a choice at the moment. The Government has decided that we are to accept contamination in our non-GM products.

Now, if the health testing down the track becomes obvious that there is a problem, we can't recall this product, and that's the problem.

We want to be able to market as non-GM, or GM-free, which legally means no-GM, because consumers don't trust the regulatory process at the moment.

PAULA KRUGER: The CSIRO says it will ensure its failed field pea doesn't cause any more problems. It plans to incinerate or bury its 12 tonne crop.